"There's no doubt the bird is out there" ... Leo Joseph, of the
Australian National Wildlife Collection in Canberra.Photo: Glen Mccurtayne

Twitchers cry foul in case of the deceased parrot

John Huxley | June 23, 2007

THE park ranger Robert "Shorty" Cupitt was repairing a section
of track in a remote part of Diamantina National Park, Queensland,
when the blade of his grader exposed the headless corpse of a bird
he could not immediately identify.

The yellow-bellied bird, which appeared to have flown into a
nearby barbed-wire fence and had been decapitated, was eventually
passed to experts at Queensland Museum. They identified it as a
juvenile night parrot. The ultimate, real-life dead parrot.

Dubbed the Tasmanian tiger of the skies, this small, drab,
budgerigar-like bird has fascinated scientists, frustrated
twitchers and inspired artists, poets and novelists for more than a
century. Elusive and enigmatic, the night parrot appears to have
been relatively common in central Australia in the 19th century.
But numbers mysteriously declined, and it was declared extinct by
some experts as long ago as 1915.

Such is the scientific significance of Shorty Cupitt's find last
September - only the second of its kind in more than a century (see
panel) - that it should have been a cause for international
celebration, immediate investigation and a concerted search for
live birds.

Walter Boles, of the Australian Museum in Sydney, who has found
only one dead bird in 20 years of searching, says of the find:
"It's an extraordinary event, which should have been followed up
immediately."

The birds may have flown. But at least now, after months of
apparent inactivity and acrimony, a nationwide coalition of experts
and enthusiasts has been set up to look for more birds - live
ones.

The founders of the National Night Parrot Network, which
includes the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, described it as part
research sharing group, part rapid response team, ready to climb
into a four-wheel-drive or an aircraft and head into the desert on
reports of a sighting.

Several frustrated birding experts blame the initial delay in
chasing the "lead of a lifetime" on a decision by the Queensland
Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the parks, to
suppress news of the find. Steve Wilson, a co-founder of the
network who works for Desert Channels Queensland, describes the
agency's behaviour in not sharing details as paranoid.

Mike Weston, research and conservation manager at Birds
Australia, says the "incredible secrecy" prevented a concerted
inquiry that might have yielded clues to the birds' habits.

"The way it was handled was most disappointing."

In an article in Wingspan, Birds Australia's magazine,
Andrew Stafford suggests authorities feared an unsupervised influx
of excited birders from all over the world, into the wild, unmanned
Diamantina.

Even park staff there complain that after handing over the find
they were "left out of the loop".

But this week an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman
rejected allegations of secrecy, describing the ensuing controversy
as a media beat-up. Staff, she said, had surveyed the area where
the bird was found without success.

They had also moved to protect the bird's possible habitat by
upgrading boundary fences to reduce cattle incursions, and
improving pest animal controls.

On one thing, all interested parties agree: recriminations about
the handling of the dead parrot have to stop.

"The important thing now is to be better informed, better
prepared to react when this happens again, or when sightings are
reported," said Dr Leo Joseph, of the Australian National Wildlife
Collection in Canberra.

"There's no doubt the bird is out there. The challenge is how to
crack the code; to work out not just where, but when and how we
should be looking for it."

In the past decade there have been several unverified reports of
night parrots - described as the holy grail of birdwatching - being
spotted across the vast, desert area of inland Australia.

Several searches, some prompted by a reward offered by the
businessman and adventurer Dick Smith, and two broad, "wanted dead
or alive" publicity campaigns have failed to produce any evidence
of a population. Yet continued occasional sightings suggest birds
still exist in arid and semi-arid areas, Dr Joseph said. "In fact
they may be managing quite nicely. But how and where?

"We still don't know enough about their ecology. How they
interact with the land, with other wildlife, with rainfall.
Ideally, the network can develop predictive tools which will point
us in the right direction."

Budgie puzzler

- 1845 European "discovery" of night parrot near
Cooper Creek, SA, by John McDouall Stuart. Named by John Gould 16
years later.

- 1870s Several birds, now in museums, collected
by Frederick Andrews for Museum of South Australia around Gawler
Ranges and Lake Eyre.

- 1912 Last living specimen collected. Lack of
subsequent sightings led to bird being declared extinct three years
later.